The Spectator’s Notes | 27 May 2006

Here, in full, is the current newspaper advertisement for the coming programmes on ITV1: ‘THIS SUMMER  Ant and Dec will give away £1,000,000. Famous faces will face the music (and Simon Cowell). David Beckham will bare his soul to the nation. A man will be drowned alive. Robbie Williams will support Unicef. Gazza will support Robbie Williams. Celebrities will be marooned on Love Island. The Beckhams will throw a World Cup party. Dinosaurs will be saved from extinction. Oh… and then there’s that WORLD CUP footie thing too. ONLY ON ITV1.’ This seems an almost complete summary of things that I do not want to see.

Or so I thought. But my moles from the Beckhams’ World Cup party given on Sunday night tell me that I am wrong. The Daily Mail reported that the party at ‘Beckingham Palace’, Sawbridgeworth, Herts, ‘barely sputtered into life… after a catalogue of disasters. … With her dreams crashing around her Victoria reportedly flew into a screaming fit,’ etc. Gordon Ramsay, the cook, suffered from a ‘crippling injury’, said the Mail, and ‘the heavens opened’, ruining everything and making the fireworks ‘a damp squib’. Wayne Rooney ‘appeared sullen’ and the waiters wore ‘gypsy-type Spanish dress’. But according to my friends with the tickets, none of this was true. Posh was all smiles, Gordon Ramsay danced energetically without limping, Wayne Rooney was extremely polite, there was no rain at all and no fireworks, and the waiters wore plain, non-gypsy, non-Spanish costumes. The Archbishop of York also got in a rage with the party, saying how disgraceful it was that people paid £100,000 for a pair of tickets when a hospital porter gets only £131 per week. I don’t understand why it is wrong for people to spend huge sums on such things when the proceeds go to charities — in this case the Beckhams’ own charity for disabled children, as well as for Unicef and the Prince’s Trust.